


The Mournland Expedition

by RaphaelComet



Series: D&D: Eberron [1]
Category: Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Eberron - Freeform, Gen, Mournland, Pathfinder - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25120651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaphaelComet/pseuds/RaphaelComet
Summary: After surviving the Mourning where the nation of Cyre was destroyed and henceforth called the Mournland, Sebastian find himself heading back to his homeland. At the command of the surviving Cyran royalty, Sebastian heads into the Mournland to secure any secrets left behind. Seeing his homeland in such disarray, he fights with his traveling companions to accomplish his mission and make it back home alive.
Series: D&D: Eberron [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819663





	The Mournland Expedition

**Author's Note:**

> A story chronicling a D&D one-shot as told from the perspective of the character I played, Sebastian Moran. The DM was a friend of mine (Eric) and along with myself, there were three other main players (Belle, Justin 2, and Tanner). The story takes place in Eberron.
> 
> Below shows whose characters belonged to who:  
>  **Myself** : Sebastian  
>  **Bell** : Sen  
>  **Justin 2** : Calcifer  
>  **Tanner** : Alexi
> 
> Reposted from my FanFiction page:

My name is Sebastian and this is my off-the-record account of my expedition into the Mournland, formerly the glorious nation of Cyre. Before the Mourning in which Cyre was ravaged by a horrible catastrophe, I was a Captain in Cyre’s regular army. I served as the commanding officer of Indigo Company underneath the command of Commander Lynn on the Brelish Front. After the war, I accompanied Prince Oargev ir’Wynarn and the rest of Cyre’s surviving refugees into Breland where we founded New Cyre.

Time went by and I continued to work for the Prince as a member of New Cyre’s defense force and inner-circle. One day, we got word about an expedition being organized to go into Old Cyre AKA the Mournland. It was led by a private citizen, a man named Sovain d’Tharashk, and his main goal was to find an old relic from the Last War. The relic in question was the Holy Standard of Garu-Umesh the One-Eyed, which was lost during the Last War. The Order of the One-Eyed carried the standard into battle, but it was lost when the entire order perished in combat. It had been rumored to be still on the battlefield to this day. Sovain put out a call for any and all interested adventurers, explorers, and fortune-seekers to meet at a place called the Gathering Stone in Darguun.

Upon discovering that, the Prince sent me to accompany the group as they ventured into a portion of the Mournland called the Field of Ruins. He tasked me with denying the acquisition of any uncovered former Cyran government or military secrets. The objective was to prevent them from falling into foreign government’s hands, denying the possibility of it being used against what little remained of the Cyran people. The standard, despite being an ancient relic, was not to be recovered and was allowed to be claimed by Sovain if found. My mission was simple, but I was a bit daunted about going into the highly rumored Mournland.

When the time came, I geared up and headed out on my own to rendezvous with the expedition group. During my roughly twelve days of travel by caravan, I happened to meet some of the other individuals that answered Sovain’s call. I maintained my distance and limited my interactions with them for the most part. If the place we were going was half as dangerous as it was rumored to be, a lot of them wouldn’t make it back alive, so I kept things professional and focused on the task at hand.

We eventually arrived at the Gathering Stone in Darguun and were immediately greeted with chaos. As we were getting off the carriages, we found the expedition camp under attack by goblins, hobgoblins, and an ogre. There were civilians in danger and the few guards that were present were being beaten back by the attackers. Seeing all that before me, I jumped into action along with my other traveling companions.

Since I was one of the more heavily armored and armed members of the group, I charged head on into the fray. A lot of the others were either magic users or fought at range with magic or bows. As I had picked one of the enemies to attack, I was nearly knocked off my feet by an explosion in front of me. The archer in our group had shot an arrow at one of the goblins who had some sort of explosive attached to it. When the arrow hit him, it struck the explosive which caused the device to explode. I was around fifteen or so feet from it and got some of the brunt of the explosion. Fortunately, my armor and helmet protected me and none of the others were hurt from it as well. The hobgoblin’s allies weren’t so lucky. The explosion took out roughly three of the goblins and two of the hobgoblins in the enemy force. After the blast subsided, I quickly regained my composure and continued on to take out the remaining hostiles.

After a bit more fighting, we managed to secure the area and neutralize any lingering hostiles that were left. I was pretty beat up, mostly due to the explosion at the beginning of the battle. One of the members of the group, a kalashtar man named Alexi, used his magic to heal my wounds. He also brought one of the guards who had died in the battle back to life. I thanked Alexi for his assistance then went to check on the rest of the civilians, including the expedition leader, Sovain.

Everyone was unharmed and Sovain thanked all of us who came to his aid. Once things had settled, we checked the dead enemies for anything useful and helped out around camp. Since some of us needed to rest and recover before venturing into the Mournland, we decided to stay there for the night and begin the expedition the next day.

#

I got up early in the morning as per usual. Since I had some time to myself, I set up my foldable table and chair and got comfy for my morning coffee. The Bag of Holding I was issued came in handy and I wish I had one during my time in the army. It can fit so much gear and supplies in it including something as big as a foldable table. Anyway, I made myself some coffee and just tried to enjoy the early morning air. I also made sure all my armor and gear were squared away before we moved on. Once everyone in the expedition were all finally awake and had done their morning routine, we packed everything onto three horse-drawn carriages and began our long journey into the unknown.

I, along with the other security detail personnel, walked alongside the carriages to provide escort. Sovain sat at the lead carriage while the rest of his staff and other non-combatants rode in the other carriages. I was situated up at the front of the caravan along with Alexi and two other men named Calcifer and Sen. A female magic user named Kai secured the middle while a male archer and a female fighter named Jasper picked up the rear. That same male archer was the same person that fired the arrow that nearly blew me up yesterday.

As we walked along towards the giant wall of ominous mist, things were mostly silent around the caravan. Everyone was probably feeling rather nervous about what we were going to find on the other side. We had all heard the rumors, some of which were harder to believe than others. Either way, I know I was a bit anxious as we crossed the threshold. This was going to be the first-time I had set foot in my home nation since the Mourning.

I nearly held my breath as we entered the mist, finding our surroundings much darker despite it being almost midday. The mist enveloped everything around us as we had minimal visibility up to five or so feet in front of us. We remained on guard and stayed as close as we could together while traversing forward.

Shortly after entering the mist, we had our first bizarre encounter with the horrors the Mournland had in store for us. It pained my heart to see how wretched our land had become. All of a sudden, there was a commotion coming from the front of the lead carriage which caused the entire caravan to stop. I held my position in the defensive perimeter while some of the others went to check it out. After some time had passed and the caravan remained still, I went over to check things out.

It turned out that one of the horses pulling the lead carriage had been turned into some sort of monstrosity. The others determined the transformation was irreversible, so to save the other horse, we had to put it down. It didn’t take much and the others managed to kill the beast while saving the normal horse. After that, we continued on with only one horse pulling the front carriage. To ease the burden of the lone horse, we transferred some of the front carriage’s contents to the other two carriages.

The difficulties didn’t stop with the mutant horse unfortunately. Shortly after dealing with that oddity, we were caught up in some sort of freak wind storm. The harsh winds weren’t the most dangerous part however- it was the various-sized shards of obsidian the wind was throwing around. I was okay for the most part due to my armor, but some of the others and the horses weren’t so fortunate. The magic users did their best to heal everyone’s injuries, but their magic was somewhat dampened due to some unknown magical effect the Mournland had. There was no cover around, so those without protection hunkered down in the carriages as we continued on, hoping we’d get out of the obsidian storm as soon as possible.

Eventually and not a moment too soon, the storm subsided and everything calmed down. As soon as the storm stopped, though, we came upon a massive battlefield filled with dead bodies. It looked like something from the Last War with dead Cyran and Brelish soldiers littering the ground before us. The odd thing was that the bodies hadn’t decayed and looked as if they had just recently died. I was just glad I had my helmet on which covered my face. I was looking pretty gloomy at that time, looking on at all my dead comrades-in-arms.

I was quickly broken out of my stupor as I heard some commotion happening all around the caravan. I drew my sword and turned around to see horrible, mutated creatures closing in on our position. It seemed that some of the corpses had experienced a fate worse than death. The monstrosities were that of some of the dead soldiers’ corpses. They had somehow been grotesquely disfigured after being brought back from the dead.

The others on security detail quickly engaged them and did our best to defend the caravan. The enemy contact nearest to me was a deformed Brelish soldier, so I had no problem cutting him down. If it had been one of my deceased Cyran brothers, I would’ve had a slightly harder time dealing with it, but fortunately it wasn’t. To be honest, I may have sustained a blow to my manhood, quite literally, but I walked it off and continued to defend the caravan unhindered. We fended off the enemy attack sufficiently with no casualties to the caravan. After the area was clear of hostiles, we took care of any injuries and whatnot before continuing on.

We went for a bit more before setting up camp for the night, or at least, what we felt was the night. The mist blocked out the sun and it was hard determining what time of day it was. We circled the carriages around in a triangle formation and kept the horses protected in the center. Unfortunately, we were still in the field littered with bodies, so there was little room to actually set up camp. I found space on top of one of the carriages and laid out my bedroll to get some sleep.

#

The next day, we continued on and tried not to get too bogged down in trampling over the dead. There wasn’t much else we could do. The ground was completely covered that we barely even saw it. After climbing over a hill, we finally got clear of the killing fields and began seeing open ground once more. There, we looked down and saw a cluster of buildings in the distance down below. The odd thing was that the settlement still seemed to be intact, complete with a schoolhouse and a church. We saw movement down there but couldn’t make out specifics. We all gathered around and decided what to do next.

I can’t remember how it came to be, but we decided to check it out despite the potential dangers. We were still in the Mournland, so anything could happen. Based on what we had already experienced, none of it was probably good. We agreed that a small group would scout out the settlement while the majority of the caravan stayed behind in the safety of the hilltop. Along with myself, Calcifer, Sen, and Alexi joined the scouting party, and we all starting making our way down the hill.

As we were walking, a small group from the settlement noticed us and began heading in our direction. I had everyone stop and kept an eye on the approaching party who met us halfway down the hill. The closer they got, the more of them we got to see and we were shocked as to what we saw. It turned out that the approaching people were actually warforged wearing the skins of dead people, most likely gotten from the nearby battlefield. Upon realizing that, we remained on guard but didn’t act outright hostile towards them. There were a lot more of them at the settlement than us, so it wasn’t wise to get into a fight with them.

The leader of the warforged group stopped in front of us and introduced himself. He was part of a warforged enclave that believed that they were real flesh and blood people, or at least, pretended to be. It was some sort of odd cult and all of the warforged seemed to be mentally ill or something. They donned the skins of corpses they found and pretended to be human, elf, or whatever race their skins’ previous owner used to be. Thankfully, they weren’t outright hostile towards us, but we were still in a predicament.

The warforged wanted us to join them in some sort of ceremony or something. Some of the others in my group didn’t want to and just keep going, but the warforged mentioned they would be highly offended if we left without joining them. If we happened to get on their bad side, that could’ve proven bad for us. We didn’t need a small army of warforged chasing us down or attacking if we came back through that way. To appease them, the four of us agreed to join them in the ceremony that was about to take place.

We followed the warforged back into their town and began to see how odd the inhabitants really were. They were all wearing skins and talking and acting in peculiar ways. One example was when they drank- they just poured the contents of their containers over their heads. Their choice of beverage was also odd, appearing suspiciously like blood. We all stayed close to each other as we looked around and followed the warforged representative.

The ceremony they were hosting was one welcoming a new member into their community. A wandering warforged had found their enclave and wanted to join them. To become one of them, they had to don their new skin and do a few other things. I wasn’t fully paying attention as I was keeping an eye out for potential threats. We got through the ceremony and learned a few more of the community’ quirky customs.

There was a celebration afterwards and the warforged we talked to earlier wanted us to share in some food and drink. The others and I exchanged odd glances and soon learned that food and drink meant body parts and blood. I watched in disgust as the warforged pretended to eat severed arms and legs while pouring blood into their mouth holes. The face plate of my helmet masked my emotions, which was good since I didn’t want to openly offend the warforged leader. To not make the warforged mad, we took some body parts or cups of blood and pretended to partake. My attempt wasn’t as covert as I took a body part and just pushed it against my face plate. The warforged leader wasn’t amused but seemed to let me off the hook.

Before we left, the warforged gave us a sack of body parts to “snack” on during our journey. We all politely took the burlap sack full of “rations” and returned to the caravan. When we got back, we told Sovain to not ask any questions as we continued on. When we were far enough away from the warforged camp not to be seen, we promptly dumped the sack.

After passing through the twisted warforged town, we came across our next horrible encounter. We just couldn’t catch a break while being in the Mournland. Up ahead, there was a strange field of what looked like black grass; however, upon closer inspection, the black strands that we thought were grass were actually hair. The ground was squishy and resembled that of flesh. It was absurd, almost as if we were traveling over a giant scalp. Just sickening. After that, we entered a foreboding forest full of odd-looking trees.

There were trees everywhere and we could all tell that something was off about them. As we were passing by one, Sen reached out and touched the bark to see what would happen. To our horror, the tree began to bleed from where Sen had touched it and it began screaming in pain somehow. The sound sent a chill down my spine like nothing I had heard during the war.

Alexi found the tree suspicious and cast a Dispel Magic spell on it. Right after he cast the spell, the tree turned into a person. Alexi immediately came to her aid and tried to take care of her along with Sen. The woman wasn’t responsive but was seemingly alive, albeit barely. She appeared to be braindead or in some sort of comatose state. She was breathing but couldn’t respond or move under her own power. Alexi wanted to help as many of the trees as he could, but we didn’t exactly have the space or supplies to care of the whole forest’s worth of people. The Mournland wasn’t exactly the best place to care for a large number of vulnerable civilians, so we convinced him to hold off of saving more people. We told him we’d let someone else know once we got back and send in a rescue party or something. It pained my heart to leave so many people behind, especially if they were Cyran civilians, but we had no choice. Sen and Alexi escorted the woman to the back carriage and stayed with her there to look after her.

Continuing on to our objective, we were swarmed by large mosquitos. I took out a torch and lit it up to keep the bugs away from me. It worked moderately well and none of them seemed to get into my armor which was good. The swarm didn’t keep with us for too long, but after they left, it began to rain blood for some reason. It was rather annoying but it too eventually subsided. I was completely drenched in it and soaked even underneath my armor.

In the distance, we saw a large obsidian mountain which signaled that we were getting closer to where the artifact was supposedly located. We kept moving and ended up approaching a ghost town of sorts. I checked the old map I had of Cyre and didn’t find anything at the location we were supposedly at. Sovain was also confused as the location he thought we were at was supposed to be far off still.

As we approached the town, we began to see ghostly visages of the townspeople going about their normal day. Then they suddenly began to panic and run away, giving us a glimpse of what it was like for them at the time of the Mourning. That was what we figured was going on and it was all some sort of illusory magic. Seeing the fright and panic in their eyes struck a nerve in me. So many people just gone in an instant.

The area around us seemed safe enough, so we decided to set up camp there. We arranged the carriages in the same triangle formation as before while Sen used his magic to surround the campsite in a spell. It hid the campsite from anyone looking on from the outside which gave us a layer of protection.

While everyone was taking care of the camp, I decided to go off on my own and investigate the town. At a passing glance, it looked like any other town in Cyre back before the Mourning except everything was quiet and still, not a thing moving. There was a nearby lightning-rail station, so I went over there first to take a look around. I kept my sword drawn just in case and continued into the station. Inside, I found people frozen in time, killed by whatever happened on the day of the Mourning. There were people of all walks of life, including children and the elderly, just standing there.

I didn’t venture too far into the station and began looking around for ways to identify the dead. If there was any possibility the dead had any relatives in New Cyre, they had the right to know what happened to their loved ones. I went over to a family of four (father, mother, and two young daughters) and saw that they had their tickets still in their hands. The tickets were intact and had the owners’ names on them. I took the tickets as well as the luggage tags as a means of identification. I went around the surrounding area and found as many tags and tickets as I could. Before I was gone for too long, I gathered up what I had found and made my way back to the camp. When I got back, I set up my bedroll and took some notes in my notebook before going to sleep.

#

The next morning, I woke up to something I wasn’t expecting. I mean, no one could’ve expected it. I heard a voice in my head and felt a stinging behind my left ear. I couldn’t see for myself what it was, so I went over to Calcifer to see if he could see anything there. He was shocked to see some sort of parasite attached to me. He examined it and determined that it was dug in deep. It needed a professional to remove, that was, if it was able to be removed in the first place. There wasn’t anything I could do about the parasite, so I just let it be and hoped it didn’t get worse. I continued to hear the voice which I assumed was the parasite, but I just ignored it. I was slightly concerned, but I just had to deal with it until the mission was over.

During the morning, some of the others continued to look after the woman we saved from the forest. They gave her the name Willow since she couldn’t tell us her own name herself. It was a bit dark since we found her transformed as a tree, but it wasn’t my choice. Alexi tried more of his healing magic but to no avail. Sen tried a Lesser Restoration spell which seemed to fix Willow physically, but didn’t improve her mental state.

Seeing that Willow was in a more stable condition, they wanted to get her dressed so she could move around freely. Remembering the luggage at the train station, I went to go get one that contained women’s clothes since the previous owner no longer needed them. When I got back, I handed the luggage to Kai who helped dress Willow in the privacy of the carriage.

After the caravan had finished eating breakfast and tearing down camp, we continued on our journey. We eventually came upon an area of the Mournland that we dubbed the “Rust Lands” due to the color of the ground. Everything around us was seemingly covered in a layer of rust. As we moved along the ground, it kicked up a dusty cloud of rust which made it somewhat hard to breathe. Suddenly, we were attacked by three, large creatures out of nowhere.

The other members of the security detail and I quickly reacted and engaged them in combat. Things began to get dire as the battle raged on. The middle carriage sustained catastrophic damage and all the civilians inside were killed. There was nothing we could do about it and we tried our hardest to take out the threats as quickly as possible. I sustained heavy injuries and was knocked to the ground. Thankfully, the others came to my aid and were able to defeat the creatures before anyone else was killed.

Once things had settled down, we all took some time to get a situation report on the caravan. In total, we had lost the middle carriage along with the horses for it, one guard-for-hire, and a number of Sovain’s support staff. A lot of the others had sustained injuries as well, but we did our best to get everyone healed up with whatever we had left. We tried to recover what we could from the wrecked carriage and moved it all to the remaining two carriages. After everything was taken care of, we soldiered on.

After several days of traveling which began in the Gathering Stone, we had finally arrived at our destination. There was a large field in front of us, the location of a large battle from the Last War. As I was scouting the horizon for threats, I happened to spot a man and what appeared to be a dragon in the distance. I told Sovain that we’d might want to hurry things along as there was a potential threat before us. He agreed and those of us that were left in the expedition hurried down to the battlefield in search of his precious artifact. As we moved closer to the battlefield, I got a better glimpse of the stranger and the dragon. The person was a warforged and he was riding a dragon that was completely mechanical in nature. I kept my attention on the dragon rider to make sure it didn’t make a move on us while the others helped Sovain search for his treasure.

Sovain and the others eventually found the standard he was looking for on the corpse of an orc. We couldn’t linger around for much longer as the dragon rider took to the sky. We hurried to the caravan and began heading back the way we came. Fortunately, the dragon rider wasn’t after us and had engaged another new threat- a black dragon. The two dragons continued to fight in the air above us as we hurried to get away from the scene of the battle.

#

Everything after that was smooth sailing, relatively speaking. We hardly encountered any more trouble on our way back to the Mournland’s border. We made sure to bypass the warforged settlement and all the other weird stuff we encountered up to that point.

As we were approaching the border, about a mile out, we saw an airship enter the mist and crash land somewhere in the distance. Some of the others wanted to investigate, but I wanted no part in it. We were so close to getting out of the Mournland and there was no need in exposing what was left of the caravan to any unnecessary risk. Sen, Calcifer, Jasper, and Alexi went off to see if there were any survivors while I stayed with the caravan to provide security until they were safely out of the Mournland.

I watched as the small group went off on their own towards the downed airship. I wished them luck and to get back safely while I continued on with the caravan. The rest of the way went without a hitch and we soon found ourselves exiting the Mournland. Those of us still with the caravan breathed a sigh of relief as the mist faded away. We didn’t look back and continued to the Gathering Stone camp.

When we got back, Sovain and his people began to celebrate the successful expedition and stayed around a bit at the Gathering Stone. I remained there as well, curious to see if the others would make it back alive. Thankfully, they managed to find their way to us and even had some rescued passengers from the airship with them.

Once we were all back together, we were paid for our services by Sovain. He gave each of us 5000gp and a bonus 2500gp for a job well done, well, despite the casualties we suffered which was less than he expected. After collecting my pay, I bid everyone farewell then made my way back to New Cyre to write up my official report.


End file.
